(EN) Brewskies over Bain-maries

(EN)

With chefs trading in their aprons for brewskies, while brewers and distillers are cooking up a storm of their own, the lines between kitchen and bar become ever so hazy.

More and more fine dining chefs are giving in to their love of the malt and we’re not just referring to the allure of a freshly opened beer after a thirteen hour shift in the kitchen. Chefs are instilling their culinary creativity into their own brews. Chef-Owner of Amass, Copenhagen, Matt Orlando opened Broaden & Build on Refshaleøen with the aim of discover new flavors through a symbiotic combination of ingredients and techniques of both brewing and cooking, while drawing inspiration from local ingredients. Even Kyle Connaughton of three-starred Single Thread Farm (California) has partnered with Russian River Brewing Company to brew a domesticated wild ale in commemoration of their first anniversary.

On the flipside, we also see brewers and distillers trying their hand at making food (sort-of) to promote zero-waste. The stars have aligned for Mikkeller and Bean Geeks who came together to create Bean Geek Crunch; a rich and nutty Costa Rican dark chocolate with a slight citrusy twang, paired with caramelised beer malt sprinkled on the back of the bar. Even Australian gin distillery, Four Pillars, is getting in on the action. Pure Black Berkshire pigs in Yarra Valley are fed spent gin botanicals from the distillery, the pigs are then fed to the public in a series of nose-to-tail gin pig dinners hosted around Australia. Lastly, Empirical Spirits created a hot sauce from the spent habanero peppers used in the making of their fund-raising spirit “Fuck Trump and His Stupid Fucking Wall “.

In 2-4 years, we can definitely look forward to even more cross-pollination efforts between kitchen and bar. It will be interesting to see how a chef’s perspective can translate to beer and even other spirits, perhaps flavours from signature dishes can be distilled into brews, kitchen scraps could form the foundation for alcoholic brews, tasting menus could be developed from by-products and waste created by distilleries. It’s only early days and everyone’s just getting their toes wet.

Catherine Feliciano-Chon